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Hastert's Finest Hour

We'll admit to having underestimated House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Who'd have thought he could induce the supporters of campaign-finance reform to kill their own bill?

Yet this is precisely what happened last week, notwithstanding crocodile outrage afterward from John McCain, Dick Gephardt, GOP Congressman Christopher Shays and the New York Times. They sound like O.J. Simpson promising to search the countryside for the real killer. Rather than risk a vote they might have lost, supporters chose to defeat the House "rule"...